Sam Mendes And Robert Downey Jr Could Follow The Yellow Brick Road

After tons of talk, a new Wizard of Oz film is coming, but this one won’t involve Dakota Fanning or Todd McFarlane, rather Robert Downey Jr. and Sam Mendes. As tweeted by Production Weekly, there is something called Oz The Great And Powerful in the works with Mendes the top pick to direct and Downey Jr. eyeing the starring role, the Wizard.

That’s about all the detail the tweet provides (damn 140 character limit), but, odds are, it’s Mitchell Kapner’s Wizard origin story, Brick, with a new title. The fact that this news surfaced post Alice in Wonderland’s massive success suggests that Oz The Great And Powerful could take the classic into darker and more experimental territory. Perhaps we could be looking at a Downey Jr. spin on the Wizard in the vein of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter – with less silliness, of course. And the fact that Joe Roth, the producer of Alice, is said to be behind this effort, a similarity is more than likely.

It’s nearly impossible to speculate which will come first for Mendes, this or the ever troubled Bond 23. And the same goes for Downey Jr. With all of these Avengers rumors floating around on top of Sherlock Holmes 2 and the potential continuation of the Iron Man franchise, we’ll just have to wait and see how these filmmakers plan to lay the bricks.